The district was eponymously named for its administrative center, the town of Batum (present-day Batumi), now part of Adjara within Georgia.

The okrug bordered with the Artvin okrug in the south, the Ardahan okrug of the Kars Oblast to the southeast, the Tiflis Governorate to the northeast, the Kutaisi Governorate (of which it was a part in 1883–1903) to the north, and the Trebizond Vilayet of the Ottoman Empire to the west.

The majority of the population indicated Georgian to be their mother tongue, with significant Russian, Armenian and Greek speaking minorities.

[4] According to the 1917 publication of Kavkazskiy kalendar, the Batumi okrug had a population of 85,397 on 14 January [O.S.

1 January] 1916, including 47,532 men and 37,865 women, 61,347 of whom were the permanent population, and 24,050 were temporary residents:[7]